"At last we will reveal ourselves to the Jedi. At last we will have
revenge." -- Darth Maul,
TPM

Like what Reagan said after he was shot, "anyone know what that guy's beef
was?"

Of the few lines that Maul had, this stuck out the most for me, and it
probably did for most
fans. As far as we know, Maul's fight with Qui-Gon Jinn on Tatooine was
the first time since
they went underground that a Sith met the Jedi in armed conflict. Why's he
so ticked-off at the
Jedi? Was he an orphan in a foundling home run by Jedi and they didn't
provide enough
dental floss? Did he get that facial tattoo to impress little Adi Gallia
on the playground and
she jilted him? Probably not, and yet this dude gets more than a little
honked off when Jedi are
mentioned.

And Darth Sidious, what's biting him? If he's really Palpatine, he's got a
nice Senator's job, a
cushy office, a REALLY good view of the Coruscant skyline, beautiful alien
inter... uhhh,
aides to help him out (whew!) He's got everything that anyone could
possibly want or ever
have use for. Why want more, even the galaxy? As Charlie Sheen's
character asked in
Wall Street, "how much is enough?"

Under normal circumstances, the Sith don't make much sense. A chain of
master-to-apprentice
shouldn't hold a grudge for two thousand years. Over time some of them
would probably
question whether this is right, or if "their day" will really come.
They'll wonder why do they
have to hang around each other in dark robes instead of getting out and
bustin' some chops.
But they don't, and yet the Sith hold their anger out longer than the
McCoy-Hatfield feud.
They hold onto the virtue of patience, waiting for the right time and in no
rush to grasp power
blindly... because they understand power and its true rationale.

I don't think that the Sith are the only kind of "Dark Jedi" out there, but
they are the purest so
far as motivation goes. The Sith, we are told in the novelization, was
founded by a renegade
Jedi who saw the power of the Force not as a tool for service to others,
but simply as a tool for
power unto itself. Later in the novel, Terry Brooks describes Darth Maul
as having a
"messianic" hatred of the Jedi: a hatred that stretches back to the Sith
who re-founded the order
after its initial destruction, Darth Bane.

Why did the Sith wait for over a millennia to strike? Because there was a
far greater goal they
were reaching for than just to take over the galaxy and wipe out the Jedi.
It wasn't enough to
just take power: they had to prove to the Jedi that their way was
the right way, that
the Force was meant for power and not service. Remember in 1984
when O'Brien is
explaining to Winston that it can't suffice to merely kill him? The Party
had to win against
Winston's mind as well as his body. Partial victory isn't enough for
power: power has to totally
convince others of its right to power, or else it has none. Absolute power
allows for no dissent,
not even in one person. We can see that in some totalitarian regimes even
today that crack
down on religious freedom, because the freedom of just one mind is a threat
to the power of the
state. And nothing provides for more freedom than the belief in a final
authority of goodness
that supersedes the state's definition of "good".

Watch the scene again in Return of the Jedi sometime, when Luke
throws away his
lightsaber and refuses to join the Emperor. If the Sith had been waiting
for their ultimate
triumph against the sole remaining Jedi, then they failed. The Dark Side
staked its claim on
the last Sith Master: Darth Sidious/Emperor Palpatine. The Light Side now
seized the final
victory in the last Jedi: Luke Skywalker. It would not be Evil that would
convince Good of its
strength. Good reached past Evil and touched the heart of the one man who
could destroy the
Emperor: Anakin Skywalker. Evil didn't convince Good, Good convinced Evil.
Good proved
itself stronger than Evil. If Palpatine really is Darth Sidious, then that
last scene in the throne
room suddenly takes on an almost apocalyptic meaning.

One of the most often-asked philosophical questions has been, "if God is a
God of love, then
why does He allow for bad things to happen in this world?" It's been asked
this past century
perhaps more than in any other, especially considering the many horrors
that took place,
whether on the vast scale of the Holocaust or in the library of Columbine
High School. It's one
of those things that mortals aren't meant to understand, and the last
person who asked and got
an answer, a guy named Job, had to admit that he was waaay too tiny
to comprehend
all that was going on in his life.

But look at what was happening to Job in Heaven's eyes: God allowed one man
to serve as a
cosmic battlefield between Good and Evil. God didn't cause the evils that
beset Job, but He
did allow for them, on the condition that Job himself would not be killed.
At any one time Job
could have fallen to temptation and cursed God, but he didn't. He
certainly questioned, but
who among us wouldn't? It's part of what makes us human. Job didn't know
that Satan had
challenged God on a point of goodness and that his trials, in the end, were
meant to prove that
Good was mightier than Evil.

There is a school of thought that teaches that God doesn't make evil things
happen, but He does
allow for them to. But it's never a choice He makes: He gives others that
sovereignty. And
when evil does happen, He uses it to illustrate His justice and fairness.
Evil is not a force unto
itself, though it wants to believe that it is. Evil is merely the absence
of Good. But Evil will
always tempt Good with its enticements of power. It's not enough for evil
that it must exist for
the sake of being "evil". Evil has purpose, and it must be chosen, not
bestowed. A person
always has the choice of following his or her conscience and pursuing what,
in their heart, they
know is true. Or they can reject it and become evil. But in embracing
Evil, their actions will
always be proven wrong by Good, however long it takes. That is why
God,
according to some people, allows for Evil to happen: because if He didn't,
He couldn't prove
that Good is stronger than Evil. There would be justice, but how
would we
know justice unless something were weighed against it?

I've started wondering if there really is a Light Side and a Dark
Side to the Force.
Watching the whole stretch of the Star Wars movies, I can see that there
were no coincidences
or "luck". That all the while, it was the Force slightly nudging things
one way or another until
finally it came down between Good in Luke Skywalker, Evil in the Emperor,
and the person
that Good had to make its point to: Darth Vader. When Luke resisted Evil,
Evil fled from him,
and Good won out in the end.

Maybe that's what "the balance of the Force" is all about: the Force being
about a "force of
good", but it can also be used for evil. And when that goodness is
corrupted, the Force allows
for evil to continue for a season, until the time comes to prove for all
why Good is greater than
Evil.